Cookies

I love cookies.  Even the idea of a cookie puts a smile on my face.  They are little packages, complete in themselves.  You can have one or a dozen.  Great for grownups and children, good with coffee, tea or milk.  Years ago I was given one (by a friend) that tasted of sawdust and oatmeal...  Sad.  In the name of good health she had created little dirt piles and couldn't understand why her children wouldn't eat them. Since then I've made it one of my life missions to bake and share only good tasting cookies.

A cookie is a sweet, a treat, not something you eat all day.  I suppose if you ate nothing but carrots all day long you would feel uncomfortable at the end of the day, so it is with cookies. 

I'm currently working on a Chocolate Chips Cookie Recipe. It started with the Original Toll House Cookie Recipe on the back of the familiar yellow bag of Nestle Toll House "Semi-Sweet Morsels."  My mom used this recipe, so one taste and I'm young again (pretty amazing stuff!) and while this is a fairly good cookie, I can taste the baking soda.  Also, their recipe calls for nuts, I rarely add the nuts - I'm just looking for the chocolate. I went to work on trying to make it more to my liking (I believe it's important to play with your food).  Here's what I have so far, see recipe below.  If you don't agree that it's a perfect chocolate chip cookie, you still get a wonderful treat.


My Favorite Chocolate Chips Cookies Recipe:

2 1/3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (if you use salted butter reduce salt to 1/2 teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
Sift these together and set aside.

1 cup butter (softened)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla flavoring
2 eggs (I use extra large/large is o.k.)
2 cups of Nestle Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 375 F-
Mix butter and sugars until fluffy (3 minutes with a hand mixer)
Add vanilla and eggs, mixing well. (2 minutes with mixer)
Add dry ingredients to the bowl and mix until everything is blended together. (2 minutes with mixer)

Put mixer away.  Pour in chocolate chips and stir by hand until chips are evenly distributed in the dough.  Scoop out a tablespoon of the dough and drop onto ungreased cookie sheet (I use parchment paper to line my cookie sheets - but I'm just lazy and want the easiest clean up possible). I get 12 cookies per cookie sheet, don't crowd them.

Bake for 11 minutes.  Cool on cookie sheet 2 minutes then move to cooling rack to cool completely.  Makes at least 4 dozen cookies.

Enjoy.